Chinese American Immigrant Mothers’ Discussion of Emotion With Children

Abstract

This study examined the unique relations of American and Chinese cultural orientations to the content and quality of first-generation Chinese American immigrant mothers’ emotion discussion with their school-aged children (age = 5 to 9 years). Mother-child dyads ( n = 187) were videotaped during a storytelling task, and various aspects of mothers’ emotion talk were coded. Mothers self-reported on their cultural orientations in language proficiency and behaviors (i.e., media use and social affiliations). Controlling for socioeconomic status, mother’s age, child age, gender, and generation status, as well as the length, elaborateness, and language (English and/or Chinese) of storytelling, mothers’ Chinese orientation was uniquely associated with their lower use of emotion questions and explanations and a lower quality of emotion discussion. Although mothers’ American orientation was positively correlated with their use of positive emotion words and emotion explanations, it did not uniquely predict emotion discussion after controlling for other predictors.